


6 Times The Avengers Hugged Each Other

by Sharksdontsleep



Category: Captain America (2011), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, warning - mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-06
Updated: 2012-05-06
Packaged: 2017-11-04 22:51:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharksdontsleep/pseuds/Sharksdontsleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the Avengerskink prompt: 5 (or more) times one of the Avengers asked another for a hug, and the one time someone never needed to ask.</p><p>Note that my take on 'hugging' is somewhat loose. </p><p>Warnings for mention of spousal abuse and indirect references to character death in Captain America.</p><p>Spoilers for the general plot of Avengers, but no major spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	6 Times The Avengers Hugged Each Other

1\. Clint and Natasha

It’s not even supposed to be a mission, but neither of them is surprised when the whole thing goes sour.

Natasha has a fondness for opera. It’s early in their partnership, and Clint is smitten enough to suggest breaking into the Met’s upper tier.

“We’ll be like Statler and Waldorf,” Clint says.

“I don’t know what that means,” Natasha says, but she’s smiling a little.

Of course, they’re not expecting to interrupt a robbery by robbers wearing actual ski masks.

“Seriously?” Clint says, as he watches Natasha twist the mask over one robber’s eyes, kick him in the ankle and deliver a blow to the base of his spine that sends him to the floor. “All they’re missing are bags with dollar signs on them.”

Natasha brushes hair from her eyes, smirks, ties the robbers up with the climbing rope she’d brought, and calls 9-1-1 on one of the robbers’ phones.

They’ll have to free-climb their way down, but there’s enough scaffolding from construction that it shouldn’t be a problem. Which doesn’t stop Clint from wrenching his shoulder when it turns out one of the bars of scaffolding isn’t as secure as it should be, and comes loose, dropping Clint to the floor.

He feels the tendons in his shoulder stretch slightly, and it’s his bow arm, dammit.

“Come here,” Natasha says, before he can even complain. She wraps her arms around him, clutches him tight, and he can feel the joint realign slightly, feels a relieved ‘pop’ as the bone slides minutely in its socket.

“Thank you,” he says, when she’s done.

She doesn’t respond, just walks toward the sounds of an aria rising through the rafters. Clint follows.

 

2\. Natasha and Pepper

Pepper knows that ‘Natalie’ isn’t who she says she is.

For one thing, most personal assistants fresh from Barnard don’t have tiny incision scars across their knuckles, too regular to be anything but deliberate cuts. For another, most PAs don’t startle, ever so slightly, at the sounds of cars backfiring. And most don’t look over at Pepper after, to ensure that Pepper has seen this tell.

So, it’s little surprise that, when ‘Natalie’ leans in for a seemingly friendly hug one day, she grabs Pepper, shoves her behind the nearest cover, in this case, Tony’s bar in his Montecarlo penthouse, and produces two throwing knives from somewhere on her person.

The goons who’ve decided to attack Stark property go down in a neat one-two, and ‘Natalie’ secures one strand of hair that’s gotten loose.

“We’ll have to tell Tony at some point,” Pepper says.

Natalie shrugs.

 

3\. Pepper and Coulson

The cellist moves to Portland on a Tuesday. Coulson knew it was coming, had spent time at her apartment wrapping plates in newspaper, hauling books to donate to the local library.

It’s easier this way, she says. He can come by whenever he has free time, and she wouldn’t worry if he didn’t.

He never has any free time. They both know it.

Tuesday also means his meeting with Pepper, going over the detail work that Stark doesn’t bother with. They’re halfway through reviewing StarkTech’s newest venture when she looks at him over the tablet display, eyes kind.

“You know,” she says, putting her Blackberry on the coffee table. “I could really use a hug right now.”

She smells like expensive soap, nothing like Stark, who always has a tinge of Scotch and engine grease. She runs a cautious hand up his back, stroking gently.

“It’s hard,” she says. “Loving men like you.”

“I’m not like -” he says.

“Of course you are,” she says.

He doesn’t know what to say, lets her hold him up for a minute longer.

 

4\. Coulson and Cap

Phil has the trading cards, of course. He has the trading cards, and the posters, and comics. He’s the envy of all the boys on his street, shows them off proudly, tisks at his friends’ greasy fingers on the edges of his cards, smiles thinly when they proclaim how great Phil’s dad is to buy him all this Cap stuff.

Phil doesn’t say that it’s not his father who buys it. That week, his mother comes home, makeup caked over her bruised eye, with the new Cap toy, an action figure. His father doesn’t come home, or comes home drunk.

“Shh...” Phil says, clutching the Cap figure to his chest, as the sound of his parents screaming at each other filters through his bedroom door.

Cap is plastic, sharp around the edges, shield digging into Phil’s palm. Phil knows he should keep it in the packaging, that it will be worth less once it’s played with, but he can’t help it.

“It’ll be alright, Cap,” he says. “I promise.”

 

5\. Cap and Thor

In retrospect, Steve thinks, agreeing to go out drinking is probably a bad idea, even if it’s just at a sports bar. He spends his time trying not to complain that the music is too loud. Thor is genuinely puzzled by the lack of mead on the drink menu, but remembers not to smash his mug on the floor to request a refill. Most of the time.

Steve smiles tightly when women approach him, gently removes their hands from his arm, turns down their offers of beer. He guards a barstool at the end of the bar, so that he only has to run interference on one seat, but settles in once the bartender changes the channel to a baseball game.

She’s an older lady, probably in her early sixties, and she keeps his glass refilled with the small stock of Mexican Coke that they keep behind the bar, commiserates with him on the evil aftertaste of high fructose corn syrup. She’s got two sons, one in the Army and one in the Marines, and don’t they just love to tease each other about it?

Pictures come out, of kids and grandkids, a little girl in a white baptismal dress, a family barbecue at the beach.

Thor finds Steve running his thumb over one picture, of her two sons in their respective uniforms, the younger one giving the older one a noogie. One is dark-haired, the other light. Both are grinning.

“Fine warriors,” Thor booms, throwing an arm casually around Steve. “They deserve a toast.”

Steve accepts the beer Thor buys him, clinks his glass with Thor’s mug and the bartender’s soda bottle. “To warriors,” he says.

“Both living and gone,” the bartender says.

Steve drinks.

 

6\. Thor and Bruce and Tony

It’s become a routine. Bruce lets the Other Guy out, wakes up in a pile of rubble, Thor standing over him. None of the others can even come close to containing him, though the Other Guy is fond of Iron Man, will stretch his fingers out as Tony flits around him.

‘Shiny,’ apparently, is part of his vocabulary.

When he’s himself and not not himself, it worries Bruce. Tony contends that he can always fly away if things get too rough, but when has Tony ever been a good judge of that sort of thing?

Thor, on the other hand, seems content enough to thwack him with his hammer - and, occasionally, to put the hammer on top of him, if he needs to be pinned. Bruce develops a permanent sore spot on his chest, one that’s tender even when he’s himself.

After a particularly brutal fight, he wakes up - buck-ass naked, of course - chest throbbing. Thor reaches a hand down, pulls him up and into a great hug, mindless of Bruce’s nudity, the scales of his armor cool against Bruce’s sore limbs.

“You have much to carry,” Thor says, wrapping an arm around Bruce to help him over the broken concrete of a building he’d just destroyed. “We have words for this on Asgard. That a great burden is made light by many hands.”

They hobble into the street. Bruce accepts the clothes that Tony gives him, dresses quickly. He’d hurt his ankle, probably kicking something or someone down.

Tony could easily lift him in the suit, and fly him back to Avengers tower, as could Thor. He hates that feeling, the non-control of someone else flying him around, the threat of the sudden drop, not knowing who he’ll be when he lands.

Instead, Tony hooks one arm under his, Thor the other, ducking a little, and between the three of them, they walk up the road, Bruce’s feet firmly on the ground, even as his teammates carry some of his weight.


End file.
